


Criminal

by Wearing Cardigans (Haelblazer)



Category: Supernatural, White Collar
Genre: Banter, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Bisexual Neal Caffrey, Canonical Character Death, Castiel & Dean Winchester Friendship, Castiel's Vessel is Attractive, Competence Kink, Crimes & Criminals, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, F/M, Flirting, Forgery, Hunter Dean, Innuendo, Loyalty, M/M, Moral Ambiguity, Mutual Pining, Neal Flirts With Everybody, Neal hates guns, Neal's Tracker, Off-screen Relationship(s), Old Friends, On-Again/Off-Again Relationship, POV Dean Winchester, Past Relationship(s), Post-Hell Dean, Pre-Series, Reunited and It Feels So Good, Season/Series 01, Season/Series 05, Secrets, Talented!Neal, The Winchesters and The Law, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2009-10-31
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 07:08:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3240827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haelblazer/pseuds/Wearing%20Cardigans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean checks into a New York motel using an identity created for him over four years ago by the best forger, counterfeiter, and general white collar criminal Dean has ever known.  That criminal?  Well he’s happy to see that identity is still in use.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Phone Call

**Author's Note:**

> Set during Supernatural Season 5, White Collar Season One.

Dean was always suspicious of ringing motel room phones. Anyone who knew enough to track him to the room should’ve also known enough to call his cell phone. He knew that the ringing couldn’t just be ignored though, because if he didn’t pick it up it would turn out to be the child of some possessed woman in the next room, or Sam in trouble and trying to cover for the fact that he was calling Dean.

It couldn’t be the latter this time, because Dean could hear Sam in the bathroom showering off whatever bodily fluids a hobgoblin expels when beheaded. Still, he knew enough about the horror movie that was his life to know that not answering was probably a bad idea. He took a deep breath, finished reassembling the gun he’d been cleaning, and picked up the receiver.

“Yeah.” Dean’s voice was rough when he answered the phone, not just because the cold New York air was wreaking havoc on his throat, but because he wanted to make it clear to whoever was on the other end of the line that he was busy and that they’d better have an important reason for calling.

“Well consider me chastened for thinking it wouldn't really be you.” The caller’s amusement was evident in his voice, and it worried Dean more than any threats or screaming would’ve ever worried him. Dean’s first thought was that the angels might have tracked them down somehow. He tried to remember if there had been any missionaries posted in the vicinity of where he and Sam were staying, but no one particularly noteworthy came to mind.

“I think you might have the wrong room.” Dean tried to play it cool, draw out some information from whoever was on the other end of the phone.  The angels wouldn't really need to dick around on the phone with him if they knew where to find him, but that didn't mean he wanted to be too free about sharing information with whoever this was.

“You have no idea who this is, do you?” The caller’s voice softened, and while Dean never did credit himself as much of an expert in reading emotions, he’d have said there was a definite hint of regret underneath the humor. “It’s been a long four years.”

“Four years?” Dean parroted the other man involuntarily.  Who hadn’t Dean seen in four years that would’ve had the ability to track him down like this? Dean could hardly remember what he'd been doing four years ago.  Then again, it had been 44 years on his end, so who could blame him if he drew a few blanks here and there? Alzheimer’s had nothing on four decades in hell when it came to screwing with a man’s memory.

“Yeah, a long four years. Glad to see Derrick Burdon is still in the rotation after all these years, otherwise I would’ve had kind of a hard time finding you.” The more that the other man spoke, the more that his voice started to sound familiar. Dean was starting to get vague memories of short black hair and blue eyes. “I would’ve called sooner, but I figured you’d prefer not having records of a guy like me ringing you up from prison.”  
  
Prison.  
  
Prison.  
  
It was like a secret password.  
  
When that voice said the word _prison_ , he might as well have shouted out the name _Neal Caffrey_.

It didn’t take more than five seconds after that for 44 years of fog to drift away, leaving Dean with a clear image of the man on the other end of the line. It was an image in motion, seen up close from below. That black hair came into clearer focus, spilling out into waves over a pale forehead, bouncing in and out of those blue eyes.  _Bright_ blue eyes that were open wide, with a look of hunger and insanity.  Dark eyelashes that never seemed to blink without some meaning behind it.  Eye contact that never seemed to end.  
  
Dean felt it like he was there again, back on the floor of some art dealer’s office, asking himself what the hell he was doing.  Scared and wanting more and in pain and enthralled all at the same time.

Dean’s heart had been beating in his ears all those years ago, and it was beating in his ears now.

It had been even _longer_ than four years; he hadn’t seen Neal since he’d gotten Sam back from Stanford. He remembered trying and trying and trying to call.  Sam was going to be on the road for good and Dean wanted his little brother to get his new IDs from the best. 

Neal never did answer.

Dean was trying to ignore the dread poking at him as he did an internet search not sure whether he was more scared of finding information than not finding anything.  He had been both disappointed and relieved to read that Neal had been convicted for bond forgery, and he'd resigned himself to working on the IDs himself.  
  
He hadn’t even thought about this man in years...he hadn’t thought about a lot of people in years.  It was like: his father went missing, he reconnected with Sam, and his whole family life and the nonstop hunting had rushed at him in a way it never had before.  For all the angels and demons and angry spirits he'd faced in the last 5 or 45 years, in that moment a phone call from Neal Caffrey felt like the most surreal thing Dean could have encountered.  
  
“Fuckin' a,” Dean stuttered out a breath.

“Yeah, I missed you too.” And this time, when he heard the amusement in the other man's voice, he could picture the smile that went along with it.


	2. A Phone Call

After Dean had gone to Neal for work a few times, got to know him well enough that they both became just the slightest bit less over-protective about their big illegal secrets, Dean became more casual about hiding his weapons. John was always paranoid about sharing information, and even with other hunters he was always wary, but when he and Dean took separate trips, Dean fell into his own patterns.  There was a certain camaraderie that Dean felt when he did business with people like Neal.  The guy might not have been out to make the world a better place, but he was good at what he did and he never asked Dean too many questions.

So when they met out in Philadelphia for some heavy fake identity work, and Dean popped open the trunk of the car he was renting, he didn’t even try to keep Neal from seeing the hunting paraphernalia stored there.

Neal had look disturbed when he’d seen the guns that Dean carried on him; not scared, or worried, or even uncomfortable—he just didn’t look like he approved.

“You alright?” Dean had eyed him up without trying to hide it, looking for a sign that the other man was going to freak out and call off their transaction or say something about what he’d seen, but Neal was too much of a professional to let what he’d seen make a difference, and he was too smart to slap on a smile and pretend he hadn’t been bothered.

“Just not a fan of guns.” Neal turned his palms up as if to say ‘eh, what’re you gonna do, that’s life’ before pointing to the cash Dean had pulled out of its hiding place. “I am however a fan of your frequent need for new identification. And _I_ think you’re going to be a fan of the I.D. that I'm about to provide you.”

And that’s what Dean liked, that Neal didn’t concern himself with why Dean always needed this new identification, or even with who this older man was in the pictures that Dean supplied for John’s I.D.

They’d done business this way for a while, Dean visiting the tri-state area when John was on another job.  Over time, they started to meet at more social places, if cheap diners and bars could be considered social.  Neal always looked a bit out of place there because for all he was an expert at subterfuge, he had always trained to blend in with the ritzy and the upper-class.

Neal had actually been recommended to Dean by a very ritzy, very upper-class young lady, with whom they’d both had a passing acquaintance.  Dean had traveled to Connecticut to take down an angry spirit haunting her family’s vineyard.  Everyone else in the family talked themselves into believing the whole ordeal had some rational explanation, but Esme, she wouldn’t deny what had happened—at least not to him.  They’d had an amazing night as Dean killed some time before heading to meet John in Virginia, and Esme explained that she knew exactly what she'd seen when he'd shot that spirit full of rock salt and eventually destroyed the remains trapped under a tool shed. Just as sure as she wasn't in denial about what she'd seen, she was sure that people who knew these things couldn’t take the risk of acknowledging that to other people.

“It disturbs your life, you can’t live normally after that; it’s easier to ignore it.” She’d spoken as if this wasn’t the first ghost she’d faced down and Dean had gotten the impression that her family had the kind of long and troubled history that people used to craft legends around.

She knew the truth about what out there though, even if she chose to live her life as if she didn’t, and it was freeing to talk to her about things that he couldn’t ever talk about.  It wasn’t just about monsters; it was about everything that happened when the fight wasn’t going down.  It was long roads, and no home, and no real identity outside of his father’s car.  He told her that his name wasn’t really Paul Rodgers, but he’d been using the name so long he probably wouldn’t bother renewing his real I.D. and would just stick with being Paul.

Esme had been engaged in their conversation the entire night, but the mention of fake I.D.s brought a shine to her eyes.  Did Dean actually use fake I.D.s so regularly?  No, it’s not like she was going to report him to police or anything; he’d saved her life.  It’s just…she’d met a guy at one of her family’s wine tastings, and there were rumors about this guy—counterfeiting, securities fraud, art theft, racketeering—things that the police had never proven.  But he was talented—very talented, Esme assured, and Dean got the idea that she wasn’t just talking about his forgery skills.

So it was that Dean was introduced to Nick Halden.

Dean looked into the guy before following up, but there was too much conflicting information to get a good idea of what his deal was.  Dean took that as a good sign that he knew how to cover his tracks.  The interactions between Dean and “Nick” were brief and fruitful, with Neal appearing to be so into the work he was doing that Dean was almost envious.

Neal never acted like someone engaging in criminal activity.  The guy seemed to broadcast a pheromone that said _'playtime'_ from under his skin.  He’d smiled when he told Dean that some fake credit cards and FBI badges would be like color by numbers for him, and he’d seemed unabashedly proud of that fact.  Dean was just grateful that his dad had approved of the work when he’d seen it and patted Dean on the back for finding a new source on his own.  So yeah, sometimes Dean had a chance to be proud too.

Dean wasn’t sure how John would have taken to Neal if he'd ever met him in person.

The first few times they’d met, “Nick” had exhibited his usual professional charm, with Dean raising an eyebrow at the overt friendliness that bordered on flirtation.  He didn’t think the guy was actually flirting with him; it was more like he'd fallen so hard into this persona designed to win people over that he always seemed like he wanted to take you to bed.  He’d wink at the end of a joke, or slip innuendo into the conversation, and he had a habit of looking at people as if he wouldn’t mind stripping them down—at least that’s how Dean felt.

The only thing that assured Dean he wasn’t being sized up for a tongue bathing were Nick’s frequent mentions of a girlfriend.  They’d only spoken a few times, but on each occasion he’d pointed out that he made a similar card for his girlfriend, or that his girlfriend would help him get his hands on the special paper he needed for a document, or his girlfriend was waiting and he couldn’t stay long.

It was that girlfriend who blew the cover on Neal’s real name.

Dean and Neal had done business face-to-face five times by that point, when Dean called with an emergency request for a reproduction of an African statue that needed to be modified with a secret compartment.  Dean was prepared to drive into the New York area when Neal asked him to meet as far away from the area as possible.

“I have to worry?” Was Dean’s only question, leaving it unsaid that he was asking if he should be looking out for police on the other man’s heels.

“Not at all.” Neal responded and left it at that.

When they met at a halfway point between their locations, at a KFC in Washington, D.C., Dean gave Neal photographs of the clay zebra that Neal needed to replicate, as well as the specs for the required size and shape of the compartment to be hidden in the animal’s belly.

With business out of the way, the conversation shifted to Neal’s taste in art and Dean’s lack thereof while they dined on chicken and potato wedges.

It was over a Little Bucket Parfait that Neal mentioned he and his girlfriend were having a disagreement.  He didn’t elaborate.

Five minutes or so passed, and it was in the midst of an exchange on the scam (as Dean called it) of found-art and other “piles of discarded crap,” that Dean noticed the dark-haired woman watching them from the back of the restaurant.  He pretended not to have noticed her, but quietly asked Neal if he’d been followed.  Neal looked confused and Dean filled him in on their audience.

“Look at us.  Wouldn’t _you_ look at us?” Neal laughed it off and spun around to see who was watching them, frowning when he saw her.  He turned back around to Dean and slumped into his seat with a sigh. “Kate.”

“Kate?” Dean asked, then noticed out of the corner of his eye that she had gotten up and was heading their way.

“Remember that girlfriend I told you about?” Neal said, just as Kate arrived at their booth looking upset.  She only looked away from Neal for a moment, glancing at Dean, who kept his expression as uninterested as possible.  She looked at Neal for a few seconds before deciding to speak.

“I’m sorry about…Keller.” Kate fidgeted with her nails, clearly uncomfortable and unsure of what else to say for fear of making things worse.

“So am I, Kate.” Neal responded with a smile that didn’t look nearly as convincing as he could have made it look and Kate sighed, leaving a silence to hang between them until Neal continued. “That’s a long drive you just took for four words.”

“Can we just talk about this alone for a minute.”

“I think I’d rather be with him right now,” Neal nodded in Dean’s direction and Dean worried that he was about the get dragged into the middle of something he wanted nothing to do with.  Neal turned back to him as if he was about to continue their conversation, but Kate tried to pull him up.

“Being with--the way you talk about _being with_ people. It’s not about being with everyone who we work with, it’s about the job. I'm not choosing to _be with_ Keller, I'm helping him with a job.  He needs someone with some finesse, you know how he is.”

“I’d rather know how Dean here is.” He shook off her hands and pointedly turned his attention back to Dean.  “Of course, I know your feelings about artists who work with garbage, but you know that found art is about more than _trash_ , right? The form actually has a distinguished history in the French objet trouvé--”

“Dude, that conversation sounds so boring I’d rather leave you two to it.” Dean moved to stand up because he knew this woman wasn’t going to just go away and Dean didn’t want to get caught up in the drama of their little lovers’ quarrel.

“Then we’re done here.” Neal looked at Kate and didn’t even pretend he was talking about anything but her.

“Neal, wait,” Kate reached out to stop him and he shook her off, moving towards the door a few steps behind Dean. “Don’t leave with him.”

Dean listened to see if he would make it clear that they weren’t actually leaving  _together_ , but the following silence made it obvious that Dean was being used as some kind of leverage to make her think twice about whatever they were arguing about, and Dean wasn’t going to get involved with whatever game they were playing at.

"Are you coming back?" Kate asked and Neal responded with a quick "I always come back" before turning away one last time to follow Dean outside.

Dean held the door for Neal as he exited, raising an eyebrow at him, “Neal, huh?”

Neal kept his gaze ahead as they walked through the parking lot, only turning his head slightly to peek at Dean.

Three days later, when Neal drove down to drop off the completed statue in person, Dean still called him Nick until Neal finally said “we both know that’s not my name.”

“I call a man what he likes to be called.” Dean answered, ignoring all the times in his life he’d called his little brother 'Sammy' in defiance of Sam’s wishes.

"Fair enough," Neal smiled, stroking the mane of the clay zebra one last time before handing it over.  "I like to be called Neal."


	3. IDs and the FBI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Despite the original publication date of 01-Jul-2010, this story is set pre-apocalypse.

Neal was a picture of effortless cool, and he’d probably spent hours figuring out how to pull it off.  His hat was tipped over his eyes, blocking the setting sun, as he leaned against the brick exterior of a West Village coffee shop.  He wore a pale gray suit, white shirt, and black tie—all immaculately smooth—and the only thing that looked out of place to Dean was the bulge at the bottom of his pant leg.  Dean thought maybe Neal had finally taken the hint and started packing.

He certainly got in enough trouble to make it worth his while.

As Dean walked closer to Neal, he could see that the other man was watching his approach from under the brim of his hat. He wore a slight smile on his face, and his stance remained relaxed, but he showed no sign of moving to greet Dean or to acknowledge his presence.

Dean could tell though that Neal was holding himself back—even his smile wanted to break out into a goofy grin, but it wouldn’t have fit the image that Neal wanted to project.

The man was nothing if not a master of giving off the right impression.

When Dean stepped onto the sidewalk and reached the door of the storefront that Neal was leaning on, Neal let his smile grow enough to show some teeth, but he still regarded Dean silently.

The two men stood in front of each other, eyeing each other up for a moment before breaking out into a bout of mutual laughter.

“Nice hat,” Dean tapped the brim out of place and Neal left it where it landed, knowing that it still looked good.

“It’s my new thing,” Neal nodded to the door and Dean moved to open it and head inside. “I think it’s working.”

\--

“Weren’t you wearing those same clothes last time we met?” Neal smiled mischievously from across the small wooden table where their drinks were resting.

“I like the classics,” Dean raised his cup of black coffee as an example and pretended not to notice Neal’s smile falter for a moment.

“How long are you in town again?” Dean didn’t know what had triggered it, but Neal was obviously changing the subject, and for as long as Dean had known him, he’d never been so bad at it.

“Long as I wanna be,” Dean sipped his coffee, watching Neal nodding at him over the edge of his cup. The two of them sat silently drinking for no more than a minute until Dean rested his cup on the table dramatically. “So…bond forgery? Come on man, you can do better than that.”

The laughter that accompanied Neal’s response sounded genuine, “Hey, at least they didn’t get me on tax evasion, that would have been embarrassing.”

Dean smiled in silent agreement before quietly mentioning that he’d spent some time in prison himself.

“Well, obviously,” was Neal’s matter-of-fact response, “I wouldn’t be very good at my job if I didn’t already know that.”

“Your job involve keeping tabs on me now?” Dean asked, wondering how much attention Neal had been paying to his activities over the years.

“It’s always nice to know my clients are safe and sound,” it went unsaid that it was also good to know who’d been arrested in case there was a risk that they’d offer him up as a bargaining chip.

“That’s me in a nutshell—safe and sound,” Dean opened his arms to indicate his healthy body.

“I don’t know if I’d say that…,” Neal pretended to let his comment die off, but continued several seconds later. “I’d point out that you’re a fugitive, but the FBI seems to think you’re dead.”

“That’s the FBI for you,” Dean smiled again before downing some more of his coffee.

“That it is,” Neal trailed his finger on the edge of the table, looking as if he wanted to speak but didn’t have the words. Dean had dealt with Neal long enough to know that just keeping silent wasn’t enough to make him speak before he was ready, so he decided to take the chance to show off a bit.

“Speaking of FBI,” Dean reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out few items that he’d made that past year, handing his fake FBI I.D. over to Neal. “Had to start doing some of this myself when you went M.I.A.”

Neal gave the badge a polite head tilt after examining it for a full three minutes. “Nice work.”

“Learned from the best,” Dean smirked, knowing that Neal would have pointed out what could have been done better if he’d spotted anything wrong.

“I’ll thank you for the compliment, cliché though it was,” Neal lifted his cup to take another drink, while signaling with his other hand that Dean should show him the other IDs.

“Made this driver’s license for Sammy,” Dean narrated as he handed over the Illinois state license that showcased a picture of Sam post-bangs and pre-sideburns.

“The infamous ‘Sammy’. Guess that law school thing didn’t work out?” Neal asked off-handedly as he tilted the card to examine the Guilloche pattern in the background.

“You could say that,” Dean was always amazed at the little details Neal remembered from their talks. It’s probably part of what made him so good at what he did. “He’s back in Queens now. Holed up in a library.”

Neal had heard Dean talk about doing research often enough, and in his profession he could relate. You had to know what was valuable, who was interested in it, where it could be found. Dean never elaborated on what exactly he was researching though, and Neal never asked.

Neal was a business contact and a criminal—in the beginning that meant keeping the information as sparse as possible. As they’d gotten to know each other, Neal had been kind of an escape into normality, as much as Neal’s life could be viewed as normal. If Dean got out of the apocalypse alive, a life like Neal’s made more sense for him than any other he’d come across. He almost felt like keeping Neal in the dark kept him safe, which was probably stupid but still felt right.

He’d often considered letting Neal in on the full extent of how he spent his days, but it was harder to do as time went on. It was ironic considering how much he’d told the woman who’d put them in contact. It had been easy with her because she already knew some things about his world, and he knew that she was another person he’d meet with briefly and would probably never see again unless she had another ghost for him to take out.

“You didn’t show me one for your dad,” Neal leaned back in his chair, knowing better than to crowd Dean when the subject of his father came up. He’d spent enough time being Dean’s vacation from his dad to know it was a sensitive topic.

“No. He’s uh…he went down a few years back—fighting the good fight,” Dean kept things vague as usual.

Dean took a gulp of his coffee and Neal watched him, waiting for him to finish and look at him. Rather than say he was sorry, he just maintained eye contact with him for almost half a minute, letting a solemn silence sit between them.

Finally, Neal looked away, watching the cashier count out somebody’s change as he spoke.

“That stuff about keeping tabs on you? I had a friend of mine look you up once in a while—looked a lot of people up just to keep me up to date on what everyone was up to,” Neal clarified to make it clear that Dean really _hadn’t_ been singled out for one reason or another, “Heard you were wanted for murder, heard you died, heard you were wanted for robbery and grave robbery and murder, heard you died again, heard your death was faked, heard you died again. Never really knew when to believe it.”

Neal left unspoken the sentiment that it had been kind of a relief being able to assume that Dean was still out there. Dean got the message though; if only from the fact that Neal had continued asking his friend to look him up.

Even though Neal hadn’t really asked the question, Dean chose to answer, “The murders and the robbery, I was framed. First two deaths never happened.”

“Grave robbery?” Neal sounded oddly surprised for somebody who surely must have dug up a grave or two to steal some priceless artifact or another.

“They can’t take it with ‘em,” Dean knew it was an over-worn phrase, but it was one that Neal could relate to.

Neal inclined his head in agreement, and then looked into Dean’s eyes, “And that last death?”

Dean broke eye-contact and looked into his coffee, but had to look away when his own eyes looked back up at him from the black liquid, “Didn’t take.”

The two men sat in comfortable silence, and Neal sipped his cooling tea.

“Added someone new to the team,” Dean spoke, still without looking at Neal, hands playing around with a closed I.D. case as if he were contemplating whether to show it before finally handing it over. Neal flipped it open to reveal the rather well done FBI identification card that Dean had made for Castiel.

“You always were a sucker for black hair and blue eyes,” Neal remarked with a wink.

“Not as much as you’d think,” Dean ignored what he presumed was a reference to Cas, but played along with Neal’s obvious reference to himself, “Been into blondes lately.”

“Our loss, I guess,” Neal traced his hand over the picture of Castiel before looking back up to see Dean looking at him strangely. Neal shrugged, “What? He’s a good-looking guy. He’s got that really serious thing going on. Looks like he’d be very…determined,” Neal insinuated.

“You have no idea how disturbing what you just said is,” Dean shook his head.

“Another brother?” Neal looked back and forth from the picture of Castiel to the man sitting in front of him.

Dean scratched behind his ear as he thought about how to answer, “A fuckin good friend, man. A...just a really good friend.”

Neal looked back down at the ID once more before closing it and returning it, “Good.”

“You sound like a man running low on those,” Dean pointed out, not bothering with tact as he started to wonder about Neal’s reasons for seeking him out.

“Ha, yes, well. It is a transitional period in my life,” Neal’s smile was unsure for a moment, “I get by.”

“How’s uh, Katie, was it?” If the past was any indicator, Dean had a feeling any insecurity Neal felt was due to her.

“Kate,” Neal corrected, “And it’s complicated. How ‘bout you? Ever fix things with Cassie?”

“Good memory,” Dean was surprised to realize he hadn’t thought about Cassie since he’d helped her with that damn racist truck.

“’s my job,” Neal shrugged off the statement as nothing special and Dean was starting to wonder if Neal said that about everything he did well, then realized that no, he certainly didn’t…

“She’s onto bigger and better things.”

“Well that’s my gain isn’t it?” Neal switched effortlessly back into flirtatious mode.

“Probably,” Dean admitted, “Still, I’m gonna assume you haven’t been watching that card all these years, and that you didn’t track me down just to talk about old girlfriends and whether you were gonna get into my pants again.”

“Yeah about that ulterior motive…there’s a reason I couldn’t come to you,” Neal grimaced apologetically as he nodded down, indicating that Dean should look under the table. When Dean was looking, he pulled at the fabric of his pant leg, lifting it enough to reveal the tracking anklet blinking on his leg.

“Shit, Neal,” Dean had to stop himself from instinctively looking around for an unmarked van or anyone who looked like they were doing surveillance.

“Property of the F.B.I.,” Neal explained, “They’ve decided they could use my expertise, so I've recently been doing some _consulting_ work for white collar.”

“You’re working for the feds now?” Dean started to understand why Neal had looked like he wanted to tell him something earlier.

“I’m obviously not very loyal to them, am I?” Neal gestured towards Dean, the undead fugitive he was currently having a drink with.

“But you do get how stupid it is for us to meet,” Dean rubbed his face, annoyed that even when the monsters weren’t giving him trouble he ended up in situations like this.

“Risky maybe, but not stupid,” Neal spoke, not bothering to pretend that ‘risky’ was much better than ‘stupid’. He raised his hands in supplication, “Look, I get it; it’s not good for me to be seen with you, it’s not good for you to be seen. I’ll be in the same boat as you soon enough if you can do what I hope you can do.”

“You looking for someone to go somewhere you can’t have them know you’re going?” Dean hoped that Neal was just going to ask him to maybe go out of state, and not to some shady deal that would involve Dean pretending to be Neal or something else destined to be a disaster.

“You think I’d waste a call to Dean Winchester on a trip I could hire someone else to make? No, I’m asking you here because of those things you do.”

“Things?” Dean dead-panned, wondering if Neal expected him to kill somebody for him—he had seen the weapons, maybe he thought Dean was a hitman.

“I don’t know. Whatever it is you do. I’ve seen your supplies, remember? And you told me that night in the gallery…,” Neal trailed off and Dean looked at him curiously, not remembering what he was talking about, and seriously starting to think Neal was trying to order a hit, “I kissed you and pushed you up against the door of the storage closet and after you kissed me back you joked about not being in the closet and wondered if you were under a spell. But you weren’t joking… you were serious, because you started chanting in Latin and then you called your dad to ask him about love spells.”

Dean remembered.

“I just…I know you have ways of doing things that I’ve never seen anyone else do. And despite everything I’m capable of, this anklet has me beat. Technology isn’t going to do it.”

“So, wait, you called me up to magically snap you out of your anklet?” What the hell did Neal think he was? A magician?

“No,” Neal shook his head, “I’ve gotten out of it before. What I want to be able to do is get into it, get out of it, and not trigger any alarms. There’s an agent who might get thrown under the bus if I just break and run, and I can’t believe I’m saying this but I want to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“But you still want out?” Dean knew he sounded like he didn’t quite believe what the other man was telling him, but the whole story just sounded odd.

“I want to be able to get out if I _need_ to, without doing any permanent damage. I get control of this anklet, I can come and go as I please, but let them think I’m on their leash until I find a way out without screwing this guy over.”

“Neal Caffrey playing protect-a-fed,” Dean knew there had to be more to Neal’s situation—for all the guilt Dean felt over Hendrickson’s death, he would’ve destroyed the man’s career ten times over if it meant staying free.

“Dean, I have never asked you to explain to me what you do. I’m not asking now, but I know that it’s something special,” Neal was pleading with his voice and with his eyes—he could work the hell out of those eyes, making them big and watery and full of need.

Dean just shook his head—it wasn’t possible. And even if it were possible, Dean wouldn’t know how to do it. That wasn’t his thing; his thing was saving people, hunting things. “I don’t know if there’s anyway to do this.”

“But…,” Neal smiled as he realized he was winning Dean over.

“But I’ll look into it.”


End file.
